How France Built Her Cathedrals: A Study in the Twelfth and Thirteenth CenturiesO'Reilly, Elizabeth Boyle
History
How France Built Her Cathedrals: A Study in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
O'Reilly, Elizabeth Boyle
Architecture, Gothic; Cathedrals -- France
Probably the earliest extant Gothic vaults in the Ile-de-France are
those at Acy-en-Multien (Oise) and at Crouy-sur-Ourcq (Seine-et-Marne).
Their outline is rectangular. Some intersecting ribs at Rhuis (Oise) are
cited by M. Lefèvre-Pontalis as the oldest in the Soissonnais. Diagonals
were put up, about 1115, at St. Vaast-de-Longmont (Oise), Orgeval
(Seine-et-Oise), Viffort (Aisne), Airaines (Somme), and in other rural
churches. The famous ambulatory vaults at Morienval were probably built
about 1122. A year or two earlier, perhaps, are the side-aisle vaults of
St. Étienne at Beauvais.
Bury (Oise) shows the first extant half dome with ribs. Of the same
time, about 1125, are the diagonals at Marolles, St. Vaast-les-Mello,
Béthisy-St.-Pierre, Bonneuil-en-Valois, and Bellefontaine, all in the
Oise department. Bellefontaine, whose date of 1125 is certain, has
helped to place other churches of the transition by comparing their
diagonals with its pointed intersecting ribs. Bruyères (Aisne) is about
1130, Poissy (Seine-et-Oise) and Villetertre (Oise) are about 1135, and
so are the ribs of St. Martin-des-Champs at Paris. In the Aisne region
are Berzy-le-Sec and Laffaux (c. 1140) and in the Oise region is
Chelles, building at the hour when Suger undertook St. Denis (Seine),
1140 to 1144. Cambronne (Oise) and Foy-St.-Quentin (Somme) are about
1145. Such churches as Glennes (Aisne), St. Leu d'Esserent (Oise), and,
close to the latter, Creuil's church of St. Évremont were building in
1150; so were Chars (Seine-et-Oise) and, near it, Pontoise,[23] whose
ambulatory vaults some claim are prior to those of the procession path
of St. Denis, and therefore a link between Morienval and Suger's
abbatial. The big church at St. Germer (Oise) was begun about 1150,
though certain of its features are more archaic than St. Denis, built
before it. Some of these churches, called transitional, used wall ribs
for their diagonals, others omitted them; in some the intersecting ribs
were pointed, in others, semicircular.
Mr. John Bilson, who contends that diagonals were used in Normandy some
twenty-five years earlier than in the Ile-de-France, considers the early
dates for these rural churches improbable, that scarcely any were
anterior to St. Denis, that it was a case of little churches following
the great churches, not vice versa. The earliest, he thinks, was St.
Étienne at Beauvais (c. 1120), significantly close to Normandy. But
Normandy did not suspect the value and fecundity of diagonals. That feat
of creative genius none can deny to the Ile-de-France.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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